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Bill Gates Acknowledges Ctrl+Alt+Del Was a Mistake
theodp writes "If he'd had his druthers, Bill Gates told a Harvard audience, Ctrl+Alt+Del would never have seen the light of day. However, an IBM keyboard designer didn't want to give Microsoft a single button to start things up, and thus the iconic three-finger-salute was born."
Even bill gates does not approve of Ctrl+Alt+Del
I find that at least I use both of the shift keys, unlike the right Ctrl, Alt, and Windows keys.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
if we start thinking in what was wrong building a computer with 25 years technology then we would lost count of the mistakes. If it weren't for the backing of IBM, it would been an instant market failure.
Once they got the "Windows Key", why did they continue using the Ctrl + Alt + Delete?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Was it the same IBM keyboard designer that came up with the Windows and menu keys? They seem to "start" more things than CTRL+ALT+DEL.
You're supposed to use the left shift key when typing a character on the right, and the right shift key when typing a character on the left. Speeds things up considerably.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Basically, Gates didn't have a say in the matter. I personally never understood what the big deal was about the TFS. I'm sure it sucks for the handicapped but aside from that it's no big deal.
I loved the power key on the old Apple ADB keyboards. I didn't enjoy the operating system back then, but I remember wishing PC's had such a key.
Because Ctrl-Alt-Delete is non-interruptible. This way one could be sure it was truly the login screen and not something impersonating the login screen. At least, that's how I remember it. Could be urban legend.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Ctrl+Alt+Delete is, or was at least, a so called "non maskeable interrupt". This makes it harder for Trojan viruses to take over the login screen and steal your password.
That was back when programmers were also engineers, and they realized the risk of accidentally hitting a single key and wiping the contents of RAM without saving. A complex key combination avoids accidents. I really don't see a problem with it. And considering that (most) keyboards still haven't evolved a "reboot" key, there doesn't seem to be great demand. Hell even the "Windows Start" key is probably the least utilized key on my keyboard, only good to tab me out of FPS games by accident and get me killed when I meant to hit Ctrl or Alt.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I had to look down and check. Wow, there is a set of those keys on the right.
That Windows key was a relatively recent addition to PC keyboards. It seems to have been inspired by the Apple/Command key on Macs.
So I guess The early PCs could've used that space for the Start button Gates wanted - but then, what would they have called the button that's adorned the lower left corner of the Windows desktop since 95? What old song would've been used at the launch of Windows, since "Start Me Up" wouldn't have worked - the Beatles' "I am the Walrus"?
#DeleteChrome
that Bill Gates wouldn't approve of emacs either.
Elegant? Ask an OSX user how to screenshot a window.
A single button that, if hit, would reboot the system???? That's is the stupidest shit I've ever heard. If you hit it by accident, goodbye to your work. Remember that when you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL in DOS, it didn't even give you a prompt to shut down, it just rebooted. Who in their right mind would want that in a single key??
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
No only other parts, on the same login screen
Login security can be described in a couple of sentences, so it makes it nicely through the chain of command up to people who actually make decisions. A lot of security problems are simplified to just yelling Security! Security! by the time they are filtered to the decision makers.
In my book that is the one thing they got right. It is a cumbersome combination as it should be since you do not want to reboot your computer by accident.
It still irks me how easy is to accidentally shutdown your computer in windows when all you are trying to do is putting it to sleep through the menu.
In programming languages this is called "syntactic salt" and it is used to implement powerful primitives that should not be used lightly.
Ctrl-Alt-Del was a thing *before* Windows. Microsoft made use of it because it was there. It made sense to use it as a login trigger by intercepting its function. Especially since doing so put the reboot function under the control of the OS, not the user.
Yes, I've only read the summary, not the article itself, but I suggest you read this in conjunction with it, or afterwards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctrl_alt_del
I have kids. At times, they've randomly walked up to the keyboard and pressed keys. That's how I found out that one of my keyboards had a "moon" key, and that it magically shut down my computer - no prompting needed. And the number of times I've intentionally pressed the "Windows" key? Probably once a year.
Because Ctrl-Alt-Delete is non-interruptible. This way one could be sure it was truly the login screen and not something impersonating the login screen. At least, that's how I remember it. Could be urban legend.
I coulda swore that the inventor of Ctrl-Alt-Delete said the same thing as you in an interview in the 1990s. Might have been in Wired? Could be in a link in the article that I didn't read too.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
Why on earth would you want a key on your keyboard to be a non maskable interrupt? Heaven forbid you mistype, or someone comes walking by and hits it. I'm going to have to side with IBM on this one. Also, what does C.A.D. have to do with starting a computer? It was only added to the Windows startup processes as a way to trick malicious programs into terminating.
No it doesn't speed things up considerably. The shift key on the right can easily be used with the pinky while otherwise typing normally, only inhibiting the speed of the keys that you would type with your right pinky. And what else do you hit with your pinky? The 'Enter' key? Backslash?
I'm just glad we didn't have to do something like Ctrl + Alt + Del + F6 + Esc + (number pad) Enter for the same functionality.
Would your rather your PC just turned off without any error message whatsoever? The BSOD is a useful tool... the mistake that causes it lies elsewhere.
Pick one that's essentially unused on a personal computer. SysRq, Scroll Lock, Pause/Break?
Somehow, on an OS which has an use for Scroll Lock, I always use Ctrl-S/Ctrl-Q for this purpose anyway.
Same for Ctrl-C.
And SysRq is never used without Ctrl-Alt, and even that only if you mess with your kernel. Having any other key go as a part of that three finger salute would be just as good.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You forgot the space. So 4 buttons to do one simple thing. Sure, and I remapped it to screenshot like it should be. That does not explain why it does not default to screenshot if someone plugs in a proper keyboard.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11229
Semicolon; damnit; why don;t people use that one more often; I find it can replace all other punctuation;
Let us not forget the list or menu key or whatever it is called. Hell, not only do I not use it, I can't think of many times I have even heard people mention it. At least right now in firefox it seems to have the same effect as a right mouse click, but I only know that because I just tried it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
First one that comes to my find is "Why do I click 'Start' to stop?"
I guess every interface has such design fuck-ups.
I never used Mac OS but was told that you had (still have?) to drag the CD Rom or onto the trashbin to eject the drive.
That always sounded strange to me.
If you're touch typing, then p [ ] ; ' # / { } : @ ~ and ?
So quite a lot. Especially if you're programming.
which is totally what she said
Perhaps, in the past.I seriously doubt that is still true. Modern USB keyboards have no special handling for C-A-D.
But people who type properly use both shift keys.
Many keyboards have a space between the Esc and F1 keys. I heard somewhere that to allow for adding undetermined capabilities later, they originally wanted to add another key in that space. As it would be for undetermined functionality, and to keep with the naming scheme of the other function keys, this key was to be labelled "FU". While the actual key was never adopted, it's spirit has lived on in every release of Windows.
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, most people think it's one of the few things Microsoft did right!
No sig today...
cmd+shift+3/4, or launch grab.app. Given that you can remap any keycombo on the Mac readily and officially...
Actually for a window specifically, you'd want cmd+shift+4, followed by space, then click on the window.
It works really nicely and I use it a lot; but if you're not used to it, it's hardly 'intuitive' (especially as after cmd+shift+4, you find yourself able to select an area to grab, so are unlikely to assume there's anything else to press to change the behaviour).
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Seems to do absolutely nothing in Chrome. Also just tried for the first time ever.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
That is Windows 9x's login screen which could also be bypassed with ESC or just hitting Cancel in many cases. The CTRL+ALT+DEL login unlock was used on Windows NT, which does not use that login screen ;)
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I don't understand the problem. Ctrl+Alt+Del originally meant "reboot". That's obviously not something you want to do accidentally. If there's a problem it is in using the three-finger-salute for things other than reboot.
Proverbs 21:19
You forgot |
Goo goo g'joob...
I believe Helter Skelter or Revolution #9 would have been a better choice.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Hell, not only do I not use it, I can't think of many times I have even heard people mention it.
Woe betide you should you ever find yourself on a Windows machine without a mouse, then. Can't say I use it often but when I do I'm glad it exists.
=Smidge=
I actually use that one quite often since I work in the POS industry. Touch screens have no easy way to right-click so I tend to use that one a lot.
Which automatically saves it to the desktop as a jpg with a time stamp.
No stupid pasting into Paint & saving.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Caps Lock should've been a no-op placebo, like a lot of those pedestrian light-change request buttons at intersections.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete was actually a reasonable solution for the time, except maybe for certain handicapped users. Make sure the user never hits the reboot key by mistake.
shutdown is a process the system has to start. You basically are telling the OS to start the shutdown routine.
Also, organization.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
They could have stayed with the rolling stones - "Can't get no satisfaction", "As tears go by", "All over now", "19th Nervous Breakdown". Or if they wanted to be ahead of the times - "Get off my cloud"
It does not work really nice compared to just using the damn printscreen button + alt.
If someone plugs in a real keyboard it should just offer more reasonable options. Or here is a really crazy idea, but the damn buttons back on the keyboard. I have no need for changing volume, or brightness or keyboard backlight from the keyboard. Hell, that last one should just not be.
I believe Bill Gates is talking about using Ctrl-Alt-Del as a Secure Attention Key (SAK), and is not referring to the function it had in DOS, i.e. reboot the whole machine.
I'm not sure how much it speeded things up, but IIRC mechanical typewriters had two shift keys and touch typists -- a significant percentage of potential PC users in the 1980s -- would probably have been quite unhappy without their two shift keys.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Not me. I make better use of my right ring-finger than that. The right ring-finger can do so much!
Why not?
Seems like the normal trackpad method could be used or any number of gestures.
Don't forget the numpad del
Either Billy has a bad memory or the summary is wrong (possible both).
On older PCs (under DOS) CTRL-ALT-DEL did a cold start (reboot). Similar to Apple ]['s ctrl-RESET combination.
The reset key on an old Apple was in the upper right corner. I forgot how Suns and HPs etc. used to do this, but basically all Unix Systems (that means the Hardware of Unix Vendors, as they where Hardware vendors selling their hardware with their own Unix) had an at least two fingers "reboot salute".
The keys where put far away from each other by intention. So you need both hands to press them and wont trigger them by accident.
IIRC the old keyboards hat a special RESET line causing an hardware interrupt when the "reset combination" was hit on the keyboard. (There was no dialog popping up saying: oh, what do you want to do?)
So the talk/claim about "ctrl-alt DEL" in the article can only refer to Windows. However, why would windows break with the DOS tradition?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
IBM Keyboards have tons of useless keys. If he had wanted a single key alternative for Ctrl-Alt-Del, SysReq, Break, or Pause would have been the obvious choices. In this instance, sanity seems to have prevailed, and the reboot key combination was something hard and obscure to type.
If you're going to rewrite history, try to pick a better lie. Ballmer gave it a good try with "we forgot about mobile and are late to the party" (reality: "we almost had mobile in the bag and then lost it through my incompetence").
It seems to work at least in text fields in Chrome.
Hey now, I use the right ctrl and alt keys when I need to Ctrl+Alt+Delete with one hand... Oh wait!
AJ Henderson
Huh? NMI is a hardware thing, Ctrl+Alt+Delete is entirely a software thing. The only thing that ever had to do with NMI (related to this) is that on the PCjr the KEYBOARD used the NMI to signal a keystroke. This had an advantage that even if your PC somehow wound up in a interrupts-disabled state the keyboard interrupts would still be processed, and thus Ctrl+Alt+Delete would still work (the BIOS recognized the sequence and branched to the 'reset' code). On the other hand, it was a mistake because typing could interfere with timing critical things (like async comms). As far as I know, the PCjr was the only machine to ever use NMI for the keyboard.
Maybe what you are thinking is that there was no way (in Windows) to 'hook' the keyboard in a manner that could intercept Ctrl+Alt+Delete. That would prevent things from taking over the logon screen.
There is no Right Alt key. There is an Alt-Gr key, which isn't needed in the US, but in Europe, you need it to type characters that aren't on the main keyboard. For example, using my UK keyboard, Alt-Gr + 4 will type the € symbol, and Alt-Gr + e will type the letter é.
Only windows is that dumb. Saving to desktop is the normal method.
It uses png by the way not jpg.
Perhaps, in the past.I seriously doubt that is still true. Modern USB keyboards have no special handling for C-A-D.
Neither did old keyboards, but that's not the point. The point is that the operating system's low-level keyboard drivers have special handling for it, at a level that can't be modified by trojans unless they can muck with the deepest parts of the system internals -- and if they can do that then they already completely own the machine anyway.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You don't have to. You can press the eject key on the keyboard, or choose Eject from the right-click menu :)
I have a 26-year-old Model M on my desk at work...obviously too old to have Windows keys on it. The right Alt key is remapped to function as a Windows key, and the right Ctrl key is remapped to function as a Menu key (I think that's what the other one is called). I think the only program on here that normally uses one of those keys (to the exclusion of its left-side counterpart) is VirtualBox, and that is set to use some other rarely-used key (F12?) instead.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
That might eject it too, but Mac keyboards have an Eject key.
Touch screens have no easy way to right-click so I tend to use that one a lot.
If they're Windows-based systems, that's patently untrue.
From http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/using-touch-gestures :
Also applies to XP and 8.
I actually use that one quite often since I work in the POS industry
I presume most of your work involves non-Windows based systems? God, I hope so.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I guess they're probably useful to lefties.
Arrested Development would be a good code name for Microsoft development.
Or slang.
Or just a great put down.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You can press the eject button on every Apple keyboard. Or right-click (control-click) the disc and choose eject. Or click to highlight the CD icon and press CMD + Y (put away) or CMD + E (eject) - Not much of a difference anymore, but in the old days when floppy swapping on a single drive was the thing, "eject" would leave the disc icon and directory contents cached on the desktop even after it spit out the floppy. If you clicked into it and tried to retrieve a file or whatever it would prompt you to insert the disk so it could complete the operation. At the time it was nice, since you didn't have to remember what was on what disc through trial and error, or writing really small on the floppy label, you could just have it psedu-mounted and still see the contents of multiple disks on your desktop on a single floppy system.
If you were finally done with it, you could drag the cached image to the trash can to "unmount" it. The "put away" command OTOH ejected the disk and removed the cached image immediately. Dragging the disc from the get-go to the trash had the same effect as "put away".
I used to work for a small company where we had 10 Linux servers and 1 windows NT box hooked to a Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) switch. My boss was using the windows server for Webtrends.
He would never check which server he was on before pressing ctrl-alt-del to login so he would reboot the Linux servers at random causing customers to phone us because they were offline.
Gladly enough, ctrl-alt-del isn't as hardcoded in Linux that it is in Windows. All I had to do is modify the init scripts to ignore ctrl-alt-del so that solved our problem.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
its not urban legend. that is exactly, and Bill Gates himself says it so on the first paragraph that Bill talks in the summary's linked article:
From http://www.geekwire.com/2013/gates-harvard/
“You want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signaling to a very low level of the software — actually hard-coded in the hardware — that it really is bringing in the operating system you expect, instead of just a funny piece of software that puts up a screen that looks like a log-in screen, and then it listens to your password and then it’s able to do that,” Gates said.
Microsoft calls this the "secure attention sequence." I have heard that older PCs' keyboard interfaces would directly generate an interrupt on reception of ctrl+alt+del, but I can't find anything to back that up.
Supposedly ctrl+alt+del was chosen to be the SAS in Windows NT because no existing app used it as a key combination.
Yeah, but it already got 100 times explained why that is so.
How do you copy from one CD/Floppy to the other?
Insert one CD, it mounts and appears in your "Explorer" and on the desktop. Open a Explorer window.
Right click on it and chose "Eject". The open windows are still there, the CD is still there it is only grayed out.
Insert the empty CD, drag and drop files from the "CD that is not in the drive!" onto the empty one.
The system kicks out the empty CD as it needs to read the other one and asks you to insert the other one.
It asks you as often as needed to switch CDs.
In the end the empty CD should be ready to be burned and the other one is still/again just a grey icon.
To get rid of that icon you trash it into the bin.
So dragging a CD ... well actually all above refers more to Floppies, no idea if that would work with a CD :D is just a shortcut for Eject + Unmount.
Because Eject alone would NOT unmount the disk.
I believe under OS X the above does no longer work.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
However, an IBM keyboard designer didn't want to give Microsoft a single button to start things up, and thus the iconic three-finger-salute was born."
I always had to use ctrl-alt-delete to shut things down, never to start them up. Besides, why blame IBM? They weren't the ones who assigned anything to ctr-alt-delete. Microsoft could have just as easily used F10 or ctrl-esc or any other key stroke.
If I remember what I've read thirty years ago, Ctrl Alt Del was an IBM thing, not a Microsoft thing. An IBM engineer put it in as a debugging tool. If it had been deliberate it seems they would have used the SysReq key; in thirty years of using DOS and Windows I've never once seen that key used by any program, ever. SysReq would have been a better choice than alt-tab for switching programs when Windows came out, Ctrl-sysReq would have been superior to CtrlAltDel, and shift-SysReq would print the screen like it does now.
Is it irony or hypocricy that on my work machine, after you boot it you have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to log on, and again if the screen saver comes on? It's a really stupid, unergonomic and user-hostile design; move the mouse when the screen saver is on and rather than taking you to a login prompt like XP and 98 did, you get a screen instructing you to CtrlAltDel, only after you hit that does the login come on. It's a really stupid design, but that doesn't surprise me considering it's Microsoft.
By the way, is it these days still possible to see the full kernel panic message in Linux if the kernel crashes when I'm inside X desktop?
Woe betide you should you ever find yourself on a Windows machine without a mouse, then.
Shift-F10.
You know, for a guy with a name like "Sockatume", you sure do know how to spoil a joke! ;p
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sys Rq is the same key as print screen. It is access via alt. I do not need to use shift to grap screen caps.
It was a spoof protection measure with the advent of Windows NT.... The security minded OS from Microsoft. ;-)
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Pipe is on the left side on British keyboards :)
which is totally what she said
You could "secure" it by setting a registry key forcing validation with the domain controller, but as you say that was easy to bypass too
I am a lefty. I never use them either. Mouse with right hand as the most-utilized short cuts are left-handed, Ctrl-A, -X, -C, -V, etc.
I would think "Sympathy for the Devil" was more appropriate. ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Macs have a keyboard control panel.
You can reconfigure screenshot taking to any key you want, even an obscure PC key :D like prt-scr.
no need for changing volume, or brightness or keyboard backlight I do that ab dozen times a day ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I mean considering some of the ridiculous key-combos required on a Mac over the years both before and during OS startup, I bless Microsoft for only requiring 3 fingers to get things moving.
I think at one time I had to use both hands and my tongue in order to get my Mac out of a retarded state, and it didn't even thank me afterwards.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
There is no Right Alt key.
Err... I just looked down at my [US] keyboard and there is a key labeled "Alt" immediately to the right of the space bar.
The Compose key is a much better way to handle extra symbols. Sun keyboards used to have a key with that name, and on Linux you can assign one of those useless keys to the right of the space bar (I use "Window") to act as a Compose key. Compose = E to get €, Compose ' e to get é, Compose / l to get , Compose ~ n to get ñ, etc.
Really; It can; OMG that's amazing; Why did I never know this before;;;;;
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There is no Right Alt key in England.
FTFY
Non-international (most in my experience) US keyboards don't have an AltGr key. They do have a right Alt key.
Also, the default US keymap causes AltGr to function as a normal Alt.
He effected a bored affect.
I use SysReq in Linux. Other then that, never.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Sun keyboards have both Compose and Alt-Graph (as I look down at my Type 6....)
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I've got it bound to alt-gr, so I can more easily type international characters and symbols. Of course most of those don't work on /. so it's pretty useless here, but if you happen to need it it's handy.
Not a sentence!
On my US keyboard (not that I am American), I use the right-alt as a alt-gr as well. To get accented letters, I press the alt-gr key, and then the accent and then the key I want the accent on. Fancy. Of course, I had to modify some settings to do that, because it's not on by default...
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
When you press Ctrl+Alt+Del on your computer, you know that the OS is the one that receives it so you know that the login screen before you was generated by the OS and not some malware that's sitting in userland.
When you 'simulate' it from a remote session, you lose that guarantee. Any malware could intercept the simulated Ctrl+Alt+Del and show you what looks like the OS login screen.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Bah, I find my right index finger works well on all keys. I've seen people feel all high and mighty because they use both index fingers, but I find 1 to be good enough for me. Whew, after typing all that, I need to take a break!
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
He wanted a new key, not to re-purpose an old key. SysReq itself exists for the same reason.
Pause/Break actually does have uses itself, you may not utilize them, but others do. Or say they do, and would whine like crazy if you took it away from them.
Mine doesn't! (Sun Type 6 - right side has Meta, Compose, and Alt-Graph
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Perhaps ...
But coding "blind" is pretty difficult with non american keyboards.
I type more or less blind, but how would I find the increase volume or decrease volume keys while watching a movie in the dark? Or do you really want me to memorize that as well? :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This post incorrectly recounts the fundamental point of the referenced article. Read your own article before posting in the future!
The article points out that the mistake was using CTRL-ALT-DEL as a way to login, not to reboot! Kudos to Bill Gates for admitting this huge design flaw. Only one of the many reasons I don't like Windows.
I guess the screen limitation is to blame. Prior to 2007, expectation for touch screen were quite low. (single touch, resistive, only gesture supported is "tap").
You can actually set it to many formats. I forgot that png was the default. We always set it to jpg at my last job because of other system requirements.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
My keyboard has two shift keys. He should have used one of those.
Where did you learn to type? Any typing class will teach you that you're supposed to use each shift key for the hand opposite to the hand which types the letter/number. Using one shift key all the time (usually the left) just puts that hand into needlessly slow and awkward claw positions.
Theoretically, you're supposed to do the same with the Ctrl & Alt keys, but keyboard manufacturers refuse to put those in a consistent, pinky-accessible spot on the right side. (Laptop makers, I'm talking about you.) That's probably one of the biggest reasons that one-handed shifting has become so endemic. If you want a redundant set of keys, I'd point the finger at those first.
(P.S. I also was taught to actually use the caps lock key when typing in caps, and it is a big pinky-saver when writing C macros.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Except that Preview opens, crops & copies the file faster than Paint opens.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That's a system setting, you can mess with it (assuming Admin rights) through control panel.
Control Panel > Users > Manage User Accounts > Advanced
At the bottom, "Secure sign-in" - take the tick out of that, and Apply.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
Yes, and I miss the Menu key on my new laptop. Is there a way to assign it to any other key in KDE / X11 ? For instance the [Calc] key which I'd never seen before on a laptop.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
A lefty I know mouses with his left hand. Can't vouch for certain, but it's likely he uses the right set.
It would've been far more fun to name that key the "Any" key, which would've erased so much luser confusion about "Hit any key to continue"
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
Yeah, same here. Lefty and have no use for those keys.
"However, an IBM keyboard designer didn't want to give Microsoft a single button to start things up, and thus the iconic three-finger-salute was born." Start things up?! I think he meant to stop buggy Microsoft's software before it crashes the whole buggy operating system of Microsoft. And there was a button designed for similar operation: Reset on the PC box. Used more often than all keyboard keys all together.
I'm in the US. I'm looking at the right Alt key adjacent to the space bar as I type.
I recall when IBM introduced the IBM AT Keyboard (84-key keyboard, with function keys down the left hand side where &deity. intended) they also introduced the 'System Request' key, intended as a non-maskable attention grabbing key. I don't think that was ever used either - though it did propagate into the 101/102 key keyboards later. Those of us who remember teletypes will recall the attention / break key as well - which never worked, trying to get attention on a round-robin timeshare system was always a pain - you kept getting timed out if you were a slow typist, and had to wait your turn ..
I had a keyboard once with a dedicated start/shutdown key.
After shutting down my system a few times accidentally I threw that keyboard away.
Seems like a bad design. Macs had a power key for ages on their keyboard, but it pulled up a shutdown prompt instead of killing the whole machine instantly. (You could hold it down for 3 seconds for a force power down, IIRC.) It was also far above the keys and hard to accidentally hit on the machines I remember. This is the one I had on my Performa 5200, and this was the one my old iMac had. (You can see the power key on the latter above the divide between the letter and numeric keypad sections.)
What was the keyboard you used like, and what OS was it for?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Is it, by any chance, a Dell?
I only ask because I have a dell keyboard in the office with several extra controls and.... a calc key. Which I just pressed and, lo and behold, even on RHEL 6 (don't get me started) it brings up... the calculator.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Alt-Gr is one of the stupidest keyboard modifications I've scene. On many keyboards in the EU, Alt-Gr functions like a second shift key, eg. alt-gr and 4 will give the euro symbol....but why not just make this behaviour bound to alt? Why invent alt-gr?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
If I ever find myself on a Windows machine, I figure woe already done gone betided me.
I think cntl+alt+del is fine for either doing a shutdown or restart (it that's what you really want to do, it should not be a single keystroke). HAL9000 required a physical key and multiple apertures to shut it down, http://mfwright.com/2001exp.html
WHAT ABOUT THE CAPS LOCK KEY?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You are an abnormal lefty, as my wife and I both mouse with the left hand and use the right hand ctl,alt,shift keys.
My sample of Two is 200% more than your sample of one so it makes it more better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
He could have used that very button for login at least. The shell wasn't up yet at the login window and it could have served both purposes.
On US keyboards used internationally the right Alt is effectively AltGr.
Doesn't work in Google Chrome.
Since most can't seem to be bothered to read the TFA, you're all a bit confused.
Gates isn't opposed to the three finger salute for rebooting, he's decrying M$ use of Ctrl-Alt-Delete to LOGIN TO WINDOWS.
It would be nice if the title represented the story accurately, but this is slashdot.
The reasoning I always understood to use the Ctrl-Alt-Del for login/unlocking was that it was difficult to hook so if you pressed it you were certain that what you were then typing your password into was an actual login screen rather than some application that looked like the login screen that was designed to steal your password.
I use it all the time. I dont like to repeatedly switch from keyboard to mouse as it causes my shoulder to ache, and this i find it way faster to use all keyboard
Though the list key doesn't work either; they don't have the same effect as right click with the mouse.
Enter Sandman would have been better. Both more honest and far more bitchin'
Exit Light,
Enter Night,
Take my hand.....
We're off to never-never land...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most laptops have done away with it. I havent had that key on the last 3 laptops (Yes I buy a new one yearly)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Dude, we know that dealing with windows sucks, but you don't have to call the whole industry a POS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is incorrect, I am pretty sure. Plenty of programs and games recognize right vs. left ctrl, alt, and shift keys.
It's a gift.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I dont think you understand how POS a POS system is. Most have utterly crappy touchscreens that do not support "gestures" only a single "tap event"
Almost 90% of all the Point of sale hardware out there are steaming piles of Fecies in quality, but cost 20X the price of regular hardware.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The summary doesn't give the real reason -- it's in TFA. As ctl-alt-del was a low level interrupt on the PC to restart -- getting out of a bluescreen or a hung desktop -- and given that it was absurdly easy to write a trojan that mimicked the login screen, it became necessary to force users to use ctl-alt-del to log in to be able to tell the difference between the real login process and a fake one. There really wasn't a better choice. People had already used the key combination for years to unjam windows, and it was an easy way to enforce a needed security measure.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It makes perfect sense for it to be using something that a user's unprivileged application is incapable of intercepting and acting upon. Computers are so tiny and cheap these days, that I think a lot kids forget that we really did used to have multi-user systems (instead of everyone having their own smartphone). And in multi-user systems, users really DO write fake-login programs, in order to trick other users into giving up their passwords. Do you really think a typical teenage programmer can't write an XDM-lookalike program to trick you? MS was thinking of that, at the time, and they came up with a reasonably good countermeasure to the problem.
Don't like it? Ok. I'll admit it's ugly. But what's your better (or even just-as-good) idea? AFAICT rival platforms address the problem by ignoring it. And as we're kind of drifting into a single-user systems, maybe that even makes sense, but I'm not sure it made sense to ignore the problem ten or twenty years ago.
Bloody hell, there are/were so many reasons to either hate or mock Microsoft. And this? This is like going to job interview and being asked to list your faults. "I'm afraid I work too hard, sometimes to the detriment of my personal life. And I sometimes lose sight of my employer's desire to serve the community, instead getting bogged down with greedy concerns about increasing company revenue." Oh, Bill, you're so humble to admit this "mistake."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In the USA there is... I have a left ALT key and a right ALT key. just like how my macbook also has left and right "command" keys. Heck even my toughbook has the dual ALT keys.
Yes I have 3 laptops, and I use them daily for work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Dave is the IBM engineer that "invented" alt-ctrl-del, was even a Jeopardy answer once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bradley_%28engineer%29
I thought it was a NMI
Frequently use when I am typing. It is easier than taking my hand off the keyboard to reach for the mouse to do something I cannot remember the shortcut key for.
Voting them all out of office, now that's change I can believe in.
A good reason not to use british keyboards I suppose. Good thing you can buy a proper keyboard and plug it in.
However, an IBM keyboard designer didn't want to give Microsoft a single button to start things up
So putting the windows key on keyboards everywhere was just a kindergarden-level revenge act? Did they send IBM a postcard with the words "so there!" ?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Mousekeys =)
It's what I use when I misplace the wireless trackball for the HTPC.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Bill Gates: If I had a nickel for every time someone had to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete - I'd be a Billionaire
Bill Gates: Oh Yeah, I am....
Neither did old keyboards, but that's not the point. The point is that the operating system's low-level keyboard drivers have special handling for it
Then Gates is wrong to blame the IBM keyboard engineers. He could have chosen any key or key combo.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Or to users of certain software. I use Right-Ctrl a lot in Visual Studio, and I'm sure there's a whole army of Emacs fans ready to add their two bits.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Hell, I'm a righty and I use the right hand function keys, but only when my right hand isn't mousing. I'm probably some kind of mutant.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The perfect key to be assigned as the Host Key in Virtualbox...
Except that would do SFA unless you change the regional settings too.. :D
which is totally what she said
Unless the machine is booted from CD or USB running another OS, then ctrl-alt-del can be captured as well.
If I remember what I've read thirty years ago, Ctrl Alt Del was an IBM thing, not a Microsoft thing. An IBM engineer put it in as a debugging tool. If it had been deliberate it seems they would have used the SysReq key; in thirty years of using DOS and Windows I've never once seen that key used by any program, ever. SysReq would have been a better choice than alt-tab for switching programs when Windows came out, Ctrl-sysReq would have been superior to CtrlAltDel, and shift-SysReq would print the screen like it does now.
Is it irony or hypocricy that on my work machine, after you boot it you have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to log on, and again if the screen saver comes on? It's a really stupid, unergonomic and user-hostile design; move the mouse when the screen saver is on and rather than taking you to a login prompt like XP and 98 did, you get a screen instructing you to CtrlAltDel, only after you hit that does the login come on. It's a really stupid design, but that doesn't surprise me considering it's Microsoft.
CTRL+ALT+DEL serves as a SAK - secure attention key. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_attention_key
It's a security feature (which you can disable if you want).
SysReq would have been a better choice than alt-tab for switching programs
I don't want programs to switch focus from a casual mistype. That's also why I turn off mouse focus in *nix environments (a minor nudge of the mouse or the laptop "eraser" pointer, and you're suddenly typing in a different window).
after you boot it you have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to log on, and again if the screen saver comes on? It's a really stupid, unergonomic and user-hostile design
Security is often "user hostile". Windows kernel intercepts all ctrl-alt-del inputs and sends them to winlogon first, and other programs (supposedly) can't unilaterally react to the sequence. That means that when you hit ctrl-alt-del, you know that the logon screen you're interacting with is the one that the kernel says is the authoritative winlogon process, not nakidpix.exe's phishing window. Of course, UAC broke that model since you don't have to type ctrl-alt-del before it requests a password.
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I dont think you understand how POS a POS system is.
Sure I do - I used to build Quicken-branded, XP-based abominations for a living; "Why the fuck do they ship an LCD display that isn't compatible with the other hardware??? Yer killin' me, Smalls!"
Most have utterly crappy touchscreens that do not support "gestures" only a single "tap event"
Almost 90% of all the Point of sale hardware out there are steaming piles of Fecies in quality, but cost 20X the price of regular hardware.
Agreed, but that doesn't change the fact that Windows-based touchscreen systems have had tap-and-hold-to-right-click since, like, 2003.
Since we're talking about Windows/MS stuff here, it would be kind of assanine to assume OP was talking about a non-Windows POS.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Yes, but if the system respects sysrq you don't get that behavior.
I often use it to get spell check results without moving a hand to the mouse, though it doesn't seem to show them in this text box (using Chrome).
horror vacui
Pretty sure touchscreen support was added to XP in 2003, though I do understand and agree to the point that the touchscreens on the market in those days sucked massive donkey shlong.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
And right-handed people who type with both hands.
I listed my most frequently-used key combos and 7 use the left Ctrl or Alt keys, while 11 use the right.
Ctrl+Alt+Del - is the worst mistake in computer history. Anyone who have been programming in C or Assembly on MS-DOS has experienced more than not that it wasn't doing crap and since the logic from the higher beings stated that you don't need a reset button because you have... Ctrl+Alt+Del... - it meant that power cycling was the only way to revive the computer. So count how many power cycles that occurred in a day... Bad programmer you think - well, considering that this was the 80's and there were few good tools for MS-DOS at the time that was how it was. At least it was good in the way that you did learn to really check your code by hand to avoid a crash - and develop certain coding habits.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
CTRL+ALT+DEL was already a well known, highest priority, key combination from before windows existed. Back when hardware had actual interrupt assignments, the keyboard was assigned the lowest interrupt (the user in front of the keyboard was considered the most important and had highest priority over all other sub-systems - yes lower numbers had higher priorities for those who don't remember). CTRL+ALT+DEL was designed to allow the user to forcibly (and controllably) reboot the system should some lower-priority sub-system be mis-behaving. The only time this did not work was when the CPU itself was frozen (divide by zero, anyone?). That is where the low-level, special-handling was originally designed - in hardware.
Looking back..i kinda liked it..:-)
Well, even the Amazon Spying Lens snuck into Ubuntu even though the OS is mostly based on free software.
Alt-GR would be great in the US to allow people to realize that these characters were available.
While we're at it, how about bringing back window management keys. When I used a Sun Sparc, we had keys for front, back, forward, backward to allow us to management windows appropriately..
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
No different than a Windows user without a GUI in Linux. You know the system you work with.
That was because prior to Windows NT pressing Ctl+Alt+Del would reboot the system. If you did a three finger salute in DOS you've just lost whatever you were working on because that was an immediate restart. No graceful shutdown, no saving anything, it was just one step up from yanking the power cord.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
What you forget - or do not know - is the reason. MS code crashed a lot, so they needed a way to do a 'user' restart.
I think the only thing MS has done for Joe Public was that computers crash a lot, and it is normal. And it is still apparent today, as sheeple don't shrug an eyelid when things do not work.
Because Ctrl-Alt-Delete is non-interruptible. This way one could be sure it was truly the login screen and not something impersonating the login screen. At least, that's how I remember it. Could be urban legend.
I coulda swore that the inventor of Ctrl-Alt-Delete said the same thing as you in an interview in the 1990s
Ctrl-Alt-Del came about with the original IBM PC in 1982. IBM PCs had no login screen at all and in fact there would have been no way to hook one up to a network.
Free Martian Whores!
Doesn't work in Google Chrome.
I beg to differ - I just tried it, works just fine (well, in Chromium, anyway - I don't see much reason to use the version that comes pre-loaded with Google spyware). As does the "menu" key.
Perhaps you have some misbehaving plugin capturing your keystrokes and not properly passing them on to the parent window?
If I ever find myself on a Windows machine, I figure woe already done gone betided me.
Indeed, then it is time for a "Controlled Escape"...
Since we're talking about Windows/MS stuff here, it would be kind of assanine to assume OP was talking about a non-Windows POS.
You mean like BeOS?
It's not an urban legend. The kernel traps that key sequence at a low level for security purposes. That's what Gates alludes to in the article.
SysRq would be the more logical choice (barring neophyte confusion with print screen) but the NT designers were wise enough to not depend on a key that was missing on many laptops by the early 90's. The three finger salute is guaranteed not to be used by legacy DOS and Windows software for core functionality so it was the natural choice to be repurposed for requesting attention from the kernel.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Would your rather your PC just turned off without any error message whatsoever? The BSOD is a useful tool... the mistake that causes it lies elsewhere.
It was a useful tool. In Windows 8 Microsoft basically replaced it with a frowny emoticon. It was bad enough that it used to default to rebooting the second it finished saving a memory dump but that setting was easily changed. The decision to remove the error codes from WIndows 8's BSOD was just plain stupid. Now I have to hunt down what caused the error rather than just writing it down whenever I see it.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I'm not sure if those specific Mountain Lion shortcuts replace the previous ones or not. Hopefully not.
To take a screenshot on a Mac it's always been command-shift-3. By using other combinations (4 instead of 3, or option instead of command for example) you can take shots of just a window, or a drawn out section of the screen, or other variations. Mac keyboards don't have a dedicated print screen button, which is a good choice because it's rarely used. The functionality is a single key combination, with close alternatives for variations. It's fairly simple and doesn't waste a key.
Because Ctrl-Alt-Delete is non-interruptible. This way one could be sure it was truly the login screen and not something impersonating the login screen. At least, that's how I remember it. Could be urban legend.
Ctrl + Alt + Delete is software defined to be non-interruptible by assigning it an interrupt at the keyboard IO level, because MS devs are a fucking twits. Look at the pause key. What does that say? Pause|Break. Gee, if only you could use the Break command to ensure you were breaking out of any software and sending your request directly to the system... Wait, what's that over there on the Print Screen key?!!?! SysReq?! What the-- you mean to say... Bill Gates is a fucking idiot with such a severe case of "not invented here" syndrome he created an alternate key combo rather than use the one that's LABELED on the FUCKING KEYBOARD?!
You windows "nerds" are quaint.
Newsflash, the majority of people who use computers change things like the volume and brightness a hell of a lot more than they take screenshots. So when you plug in a REAL keyboard (i.e. one that doesn't waste keys on things like print screen) you need to use a key combination for taking a screen shot.
Protip: BIOS is software too... The real history is that the BIOS Ctrl+Alt+Del was set to soft boot the system in BIOS, and when you create an OS you can re-map the interrupt vectors to be your own, but DOS left Ctrl+Alt+Del in place because it reused much of the BIOS supplied interrupts. So, it's a hold over from DOS, which means not only is Billy G a fool, but a liar.
UK Keyboards are used in Ireland, and in the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, where € is their national currency.
Bill Gates is a total idiot? Either you misunderstood which Bill Gates this is about or you need to go buy a dictionary.
In Excel 2013 for example Alt+4 and Alt-Gr+4 do two completely different things.
Alt+4 presses the 4th button on the Quick-Access toolbar, which in my case in the "Print Current Sheet" button.
Alt-Gr+4 enters the € symbol at the current insertion point in much the same way that Shift+4 enters the $ symbol or Shift+3 enters the £ symbol.
Glossing over the ugliness that was the keyboard controller, A20 etc.
That is why you want a PC without a PS2 keyboard connector. Not sure how much of that still lives on.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Maybe DickBreath is paid by the word.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
...that Mr Gates really didn't understand engineering, and the danger of having "reboot the whole machine" on one, easily-accidentally-struck key.
-Styopa
PS/2 ports are the only keyboard interfaces that generate interrupts intstead of polling, and the only ones that can handle n-key rollover in a sane fashion.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So...you use both hands to hit Ctrl-A/X/C/V, Super(windows key)-E/D/R or Alt-Tab/F4? I'm a lefty, but most of the shortcuts I use are on the left side of the board...which means that when I do use a mouse, to increase my functional speed it's in my right hand. Also, there's not very many quality mice that are left handed and only a couple of left-handed gaming mice, which so far I find of dubious quality (looking at you, RAZER). There's only 2 keystrokes that I regularly use on the right side of the board: Super-L and Alt-Enter.
My wife also has similar complaints, but uses a TrackPad instead of a mouse now but when she did use a mouse, she used it on the right side even though she has next to 0 use of her right hand due to disability. Just what she's comfortable with.
So that's an additional sample of two against your sample of two...bringing it up to 3 to 2. We're more common.
In my book that is the one thing they got right. It is a cumbersome combination as it should be since you do not want to reboot your computer by accident.
For users of the original Apple ][, which had a single-finger "reset" key, this was a real-world concern since it was hard-wired to send a reset signal and drop you into the monitor rom shell. Of course the reset key was sadly positioned right above the return key which made it really easy to hit accidentally at the end of every line you typed.
In later revisions of Apple ][ computers, I believe they put a thick rubber ring washer inside the key which required you to really push down to squish the washer make mechanical/electrical contact (I think that was probably inspired by a "hard-hack" made by many folks who did this one too many times). Finally, when they got to the Apple ][+, they changed to a CTRL-RESET two-finger reset (of course the newer auto-start ROM-monitor and the OS's got better at trapping/recovering the reset by then, so it was less important).
By then the IBM-PC was out and perhaps they avoided this pitfall by having a 3-finger reset from the get-go...
Look, compared to the homeless people who root through the dumpster of my building...no Bill Gates is not a 'total idiot'...
I *hate* arguing over definitions of words when the concepts are well understood...
Bill Gate's reputation as a 'tech innovator' or 'computing industry pioneer' are completely and wholly unearned.
The *real* work was done by others and he and his partners copied the work of others, created planned obsolescent software, purposefully removed features to bottleneck users and cheat out competition...
They were willing to shut up and take orders...that's why people like Bill Gates and W. get into positions of power...
Microsoft would be *NOTHING* without the IBM contract for PCs for the federal government...that guaranteed them a revenue stream
Microsoft's success is not a pattern to follow for others to build a business...all they did was do what others told them to do.
Thank you Dave Raggett
My sample of Two is 200% more than your sample of one so it makes it more better.
*pushes taped glasses up his nose after they'd slid down a bit* Accctttuuually, your sample of two is 100% more than his sample of one, or your sample of two is 200% of his sample of one.
What about the older 5-pin DIN connector that predated the PS/2?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Is was that way in early Linux too, and quite annoying in EMACS, where of course you'd be assigning all sorts of useful CTRL-ALT sequences.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
On a UK keyboard you have the alt-gr key in the same place, but on the US keyboard there are two alt keys, not an alt-gr and an alt like a UK keyboard.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Genius. I wonder if VMWare Player can be configured to do this...
I just think it's odd that they took login security so seriously and then fucked up so badly on all other parts of the OS.
What OS do you think they fucked up badly on? The point and purpose of Windows 95 was a nearly-impossible engineering challenge: make a 32-bit, protected memory OS that was backwards-compatible with 16-bit, shared memory drivers and applications. They did that, and dominated the market. IT hated the Win95 line because it was so unreliable, but that was due to that very backwards compatibility to crappy 16-bit stuff. For all that it sucked to be the guy supporting it, the OS did just what was intented: become the OS that most IT guys were stuck supporting.
The WinNT kernel and system libraries has generally been pretty good, with a brief exception when they brought the Win95 plug-and-play subsystem directly into the NT codebase for Win200 (cause many kernel guys to leave). For the most part, the flood of security problems in the XP years weren't kernel (or system library) problems. You can blame the platform, to be sure, but it's wrong to blame the part properly called "the OS".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's the same thing, with a smaller connector. Unless you're talking about the really ancient ports on an XT. But in that case, I don't think you need n-key rollover anyway.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was thinking more along the line of whatever it is that MICROS uses.
Side note: Googling BeOS - now there's a nice trip down memory lane.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"First one that comes to my find is "Why do I click 'Start' to stop?""
So you can start stopping, doh. ;)
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
They made consistently horrible security design decisions in all versions of Windows until at least Vista when they started to take security seriously.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Right hand or left hand I would certainly know which finger to use - the single finger salute.
Well why the heck did Bill Gates have this the combination to make you login into Windows NT.
Back in Dos and Windows 3.1 Alt-Ctrl-Delete Rebooted the PC, when it locked up.
Then they started catching it and giving you more and more options, and you need it to login??
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I assumed that was the case, that those old interfaces generated interrupts, but your statement made me wonder if perhaps they used a different approach -- which would have been weird back then.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Say rather, they consistently made decisions that were horrible for security, because they cared more about usability (and man did they mess up usability when they switched that focus in Vista). It wasn't obvious when XP was being written that that was the wrong decision. I was still far more angry in 2000 than MS had invented the "Word Macro Virus" than any security threat to the OS.
The big problem was the 5 year delay between XP and their mindset change. MS was taking security seriously before 2006, but XP was unfixable - when everyone runs as admin and all software is trusted, you can't patch that. Had the Vista security mindset accompanied Server 2003, (where the usability gaffe would have been acceptable, really), followed quickly by a consumer OS that got it right, much of the horror would have been averted.
TLDR: XP was right for 2001, but 5 years to Vista? Epic fail.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There is no ctrl+alt+delete interrupt - where does this idea come from?
Now, for the question of why the combination was chosen instead of a specific key. Well, early on of course ctrl+alt+del was used to signal the BIOS to reboot the machine. Obviously, having a single key that can cause that function would be pretty dumb, so the combination made sense. That left all of the other keys able to be used by applications. Sure, YOU may never had to use the SysReq key, but if you were running an IBM 3270 or 5250 terminal emulator you used it, because a real 3270 had that key. Same with all the other keys - some app is probably using them for something.
So, when Windows needed a key to be used by the OS alone, what to do? Use the one combination that you KNOW no app is using, or grab a key and annoy all the users of apps that previously used that key?
"Why do I click 'Start' to stop?"
I don't think the word start was ever intended to be reflective of all functions of the machine, but rather a starting point for beginners. I've always wondered how people that are troubled by this phrasing manage to close their cereal boxes after reading the phrase "---open here--" on the top.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
This rule was invented when manual typewriters were common, so that it was extremely difficult to press and hold the left shift while striking a left hand key forcefully enough to transfer the ink. So most touch typists who were trained will stick to this rule. However I note that a lot of "self trained" typists who learned only on a computer have a more haphazard typing style even if they eventually learn to type quickly.
I really dislike most European keyboard layouts, they're just clumsy for so many special keys. Ie, a German keyboard can't type either / or \ without a modifier key, so I found that typing commands lines with paths to be very cumbersome that way (unix or dos).
On the other hand, if you want to do touch typing in European languages then you need put those common accented characters where they can be typed easily instead of relying on the AltGr kludge, so the special keys are the ones that got replaces (right pinky and shifted numbers).
Maybe not total idiots, but definitely wrong in those contexts. A single "reboot me now!" key would have been a disaster. I've had these disasters even with the power button when put on a keyboard (whoops, shutting down now, no cancel button). Sure you can change the behavior but usually you make the mistake once before you're prompted to figure out how to change it (and it wasn't so easy to find in Windows 8).
Well, THAT is easily explained. Since this combination gets caught by the hardware, you can rely on Windows to give you a real prompt. If they used some other method, you couldn't be sure if it was the real prompt or a program acting like the login prompt so it can steal your password. No matter what you are doing in Windows NT and it's successors, you can always guarantee that the real Windows will respond when you hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you are going to accuse someone of not knowing what they are talking about, you should at least make sure you know what you are talking about.
NMI (non-maskable interrupt) is a physical pin on the processor. It is used (when used at all) to signal something very important (like memory errors). Your keyboard has no connection to this pin, and is therefore most certainly NOT using NMI.
When you press or release a key a scan code is generated. The keyboard driver will receive this scan code. It does not matter how the keyboard driver knows there is a code available - it could have received a (normal) interrupt or it could just poll the keyboard. The driver (software) maintains flags indicating the state of the special keys (shift., ctrl, alt). If a special key is pressed, the flag is turned on. If it is released the flag is turned off. If the driver sees that the code is a press of the 'delete' key, AND the flags for CTRL and ALT are on, it calls whatever special function is supposed to happen when ctrl-alt-delete is pressed. Otherwise, the scan code (and translated virtual key code) are placed in the input queue, to be handled by the application.
There is NO special hardware processing of ctrl-alt-delete. Those keys are handled exactly like every other keypress, and the 'special meaning' of that combination is determined and acted on solely by software.
Ahh, here's the old Slashdot post on that one.
Pedantry: It doesn't do a right-click. Rather, both the key in question (which I've always known as the "context menu key"...) and right-click generally pop up the context menu (aka "right-click menu", to some). But the right-click pops up the context menu of the element under the pointer, while the context menu key pops up the context menu of the currently focused element (without moving the pointer there), so it's wrong to say the context menu key "does a right-click".
Number nine...
yes, I agree...actually I don't see anything wrong with CTL+ALT+DEL at all just for the reason you stated
Gate's answer to the question is silly and insulting kind of...that's my point...if Gates had said, in answer to the question:
>"Zune" .NET
>"Making Internet Explorer locked down"
>something about
>"nurturing our developers"
answer like that are plausible...
but like W., Gates is just a sort of bumbling figurehead...my greater point is that Gates's advice on these matters is wholly unuseful b/c he doesn't really have experience as a 'tech innovator' or 'computing pioneer'
Gates knows how to fend off internal competition for his job, arrange divisions against each other in unhealthy competition, strategically bottleneck primary functions to coerce users into using all of your company's products, go decades without paying shareholder dividends, secure long-term governement contracts at no-bid, and probably best, he can show you how to **MAKE MILLIONS SELLING VAPORWARE**
Thank you Dave Raggett
Also because we're used to the right handed ways of the common set up.
signature is pants
Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
No file saved, just the image saved to the clipboard ready to paste into your document.
What's wrong with "You make a grown man cry"? "Start me up" FTW.
Bill Gates is a fucking idiot with such a severe case of "not invented here" syndrome he created an alternate key combo rather than use the one that's LABELED on the FUCKING KEYBOARD?!
There was no "SysRq" key on the original PC keyboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer#Keyboard (click on the picture for a larger view) - It was added for the PC/AT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_keyboard
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
That was to do it with the mouse, and on my first Mac I frantically searched through the documentation once to make sure I was doing the right thing.
At some point, they changed it so the trash can turned into an "eject" symbol when dragging a volume. That made a lot more sense.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This is a work computer. It's probably joined to a domain, which requires all workstations ctrl-alt-delete to login. And there's probably some group policy that dictates the password prompt after the screensaver, which again, requires ctrl-alt-delete.
Strange, I figure there'd be somebody who'd have pointed this out to you already. Either the Windows network admins have all been scared outta here, or they're hiding in a corner in shame.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
We use it all the time:
kill -9 2531696; exit
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
BSOD is just a kernel dump. Every OS has its own kernel dump screen. The BSOD specifically is only an object of amusement because it happened with such frequency during the Win95 days. BSOD jokes reference the frustration of seeing one every 30 minutes, or 2 minutes after post if you accidentally botched your system in some way. And then from that point, it only got more frustrating because even after going through safe mode and trying to undo the error, you'd still end up having to reinstall Win95 from disc to clean your system out. And no, this was immediately before the prevelance of malware, especially screensaver malware, though viruses transmitted via floppy and diskette sharing were the trendy threat at the time.
Seesh, kids these days, right?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I miss how the Amiga keyboard was mapped. Left Amiga key + key was global system functions, Right Amiga key + key was in application functions. You could control the mouse with the keyboard if needed. I miss the Amiga clip board which actually worked as opposed to Windows 7 clipboard which works when it wants to. It's so spotty on my machine at work that I have to double ctrl c everything to make sure it's copied what I need.
I really don't have a problem with Windows ctrl alt del, as others have pointed out it's obscure enough of a combination that you won't accidentally hit it.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
I just use the combination to my luggage.
That's nothing! To get to the special functions of a Nintendo you needed Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. That got old quick but man it was powerful!
> SysReq would have been a better choice than alt-tab for switching programs when Windows came out,
Incorrect. Alt-Tab can be done with the left hand staying close to the keyboard. Using SysReq would require moving the right hand off the home row.
I love love LOVE ctrl-option-cmd-eject (shutdown), ctrl-cmd-eject (reboot) and control-shift-eject (blank screen)
I use them every single day.
Yes, a Dell Precision M6700, coming with Linux directly from Dell. It works fine with Linux with only the reboot command hanging (but not the reboot menu) and a few details like this menu key missing.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Arguably the most useful feature of a Windows workstation turns out to be a mistake. All I can say is, rm -rf /m$/*
rm -rf ms/*
No it doesn't speed things up considerably.
Yes it does, unless you use the hunt&peck method of typing.
Trained typists use their pinkies for normal keys as well as the shift keys.
Having to use different hand positions to type, for instance, "q" and "Q" slows them down.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
What he needs to apologize for is the use of \ instead of using the standard / on every other system.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
A good reason for *you*. Many Brits are perfectly fine with it. Don't confuse the notions of 'you' with 'everyone', as it makes you look a proper tit.
I'm a lefty and I use my mouse with my left hand but to use the left hand shortcuts like ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v etc. whilst still holding the mouse, I do this groundbreaking thing.
I move my arm.
The reason you have to hit the three fingered salute to login is that the old orange book security standards required a key sequence that could not be interrupted by user space code to login for C2, or something like that. CAD was the only option ms had that couldn't be "spoofed"
Right Alt is pretty useful if you aren't American; it tends to be used to type a bunch of accented or non-ASCII characters in Europe, for instance (notably, the euro currency symbol, which is standardised as right alt+4 on all the major OSes at this point).
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
I use Caps Lock as my compose key, and fix two problems at once (not having a compose key, and hitting Caps Lock by mistake; hitting Compose by mistake is pretty minor, really).
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
Alt-e opens a menu whose name starts with E. AltGr-e is (on Windows, at least) a standard way to type é. So you can't really conflate the two.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
I found it very useful as the only toggleable key, in an art exhibit.
I am certain that I am fat enough to count for Two people on my own. Therefore a more accurate number is 225% I did have a big dinner tonight to account for the extra.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As an older user I smell a porky pie. Why did M$ use ctrl alt delete to log in, as a marketing tactic to try to obfuscate the growing dissatisfaction of continually having to press ctrl alt delete as a result of BSODs often a several times a day occurrence and the older the install and the greater the use the more frequent the occurrence. As BSOD's ctrl alt delete's you were forced down the route of doing a complete re-install to stabilise the system. So ctrl alt delete to log in, psychologically obfuscates the impact of BSOD ctrl alt delete to attempt to use the system.
This produced another feature of many different applications, the automatic timed save, to routinely save work every few minutes, those minutes being how much work you where willing to lose to routine BSOD ctrl alt delete's. Catch if it BSOD during the automatic save windows often managed to completely destroy the file on the way out, requiring the automatic save to be a different file name to the regular save but of course, 'really big but' the automatic save becomes redundant as you often had to reach back to yesterdays routine save because the time saved was destoyed by windows on it's way out to BSOD.
M$ biggest mistake the Blue Screen Of Death, now for that M$ management of the day should spend the several next millennia roasting in the deepest pits of hell with the other betrayers. Looking back at that age I can wonder about how many 'years' not hours work windows cost me.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Imagine if we had a way to start over each time we made a mistake, clear our heads of all the bad experiences and move ahead without the past baggage. It isn't the CTL-ALT-DEL keys that are important, (first off they were initially designed to reboot the computer), it is the fact that we as programmers design faults in to our systems and the complexity of having so many different programmers designing similar systems that are slightly different fosters anarchy. The real problem that has yet to be overcome is that computer science is not a science in the same way as all other established disciplines in the arts, sciences and trades. Until that happens several hundred years from now, we need a way to reboot from the errors in those experiments we call "programs" or "algorithms" or whatever.
It was still possible to distinguish a short contact from a longer one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A local supermarket was using little dumb green screen monitors until about 2 years ago. I think it said S/390 in the corner.
Of the screen, not the supermarket.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I position the pointer, then start to type with both hands reasonably used. (No, I'm not a fully-trained touch typist ; but I did get more training than around 90% of my gender-generation group.) When I need to re-position the pointer, I switch modes from 'typing' to 'mousing' for the couple of seconds until I go back to being productive.
I use left-Ctrl and left-Alt as left-Ctrl and left-Alt ; I've not assigned uses for right-Ctrl and right-Alt(Gr). That silly key with the menu on it, which brings up the context menu is rather the most used, and has no left-key equivalent. There's a key with a wavy flag on the left that doesn't nothing detectable ; maybe I'll assign that to duplicate the "menu" key.
The annoying thing is that every other computer I work with during a day will have a different configuration of keyboards. You can't even rely on two consecutive systems being configured for the same language or character set.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Yes, except Ctrl-Alt-Del was invented at least a decade before CD's were available for computers.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Because putting the "Windows Key" between Ctrl and Alt isn't going to annoy PC gamers at all...
Accidental windows key. Game interruption. Swearing. Game death.
I still have some motor instinct to use my left hand for CTRL+ALT and right hand for DEL when using a full-sized keyboard, although CTRL+ALT+DEL is certainly achievable using only your right hand on a full-sized keyboard.
How early are you talking? As far back as I started using it, ctrl-alt-delete would start an orderly shutdown.